"the kingdom of God." It finally sets up an ideal world at the end of
the present one, like a magnificent golden pavilion at the end of a
miry morass.[8] The saddened heart, athirst for tenderness and
serenity, takes refuge in this divine and gentle world. Persecutors
there, about to strike, are arrested by an invisible hand; wild beasts
become docile; the stags of the forest come of their own accord every
morning to draw the chariots of the saints; the country blooms for
them like a new Paradise; they die only when it pleases them.
Meanwhile they comfort mankind; goodness, piety, forgiveness flows
from their lips with ineffable sweetness; with eyes upturned to
heaven, they see God, and without effort, as in a dream, they ascend
into the light and seat themselves at His right hand. How divine the
legend, how inestimable in value, when, under the universal reign of
brute force, to endure this life it was necessary to imagine another,
and to render the second as visible to the spiritual eye as the first
was to the physical eye. The clergy thus nourished men for more than
twelve centuries, and in the grandeur of its recompense we can
estimate the depth of their gratitude. Its popes, for two hundred
years, were the dictators of Europe. It organized crusades, dethroned
monarchs, and distributed kingdoms. Its bishops and abbots became
here, sovereign princes, and there, veritable founders of dynasties.
It held in its grasp a third of the territory, one-half of the
revenue, and two-thirds of the capital of Europe. Let us not believe
that Man counterfeits gratitude, or that he gives without a valid
motive; he is too selfish and too envious for that. Whatever may be
the institution, ecclesiastic or secular, whatever may be the clergy,
Buddhist or Christian, the contemporaries who observe it for forty
generations are not bad judges. They surrender to it their will and
their possessions, just in proportion to its services, and the excess
of their devotion may measure the immensity of its benefaction.